Cliffs Notes on Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

by Eva Fitzwater (Editor)

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. In CliffsNotes on To Kill a Mockingbird, you explore Harper Lee's literary masterpiece — a novel that deals with Civil Rights and racial bigotry in the segregated southern United States of the 1930s. Told through the eyes of the memorable Scout Finch, the novel tells the story of her father, Atticus, as he hopelessly strives to prove the innocence of a black man accused of raping and beating a white woman. Chapter summaries and commentaries take you through Scout's coming of age journey. Critical essays give you insight into racial relations in the South during the 1930s, as well as a comparison between the novel and its landmark film version. Other features that help you study include: Character analyses Section on the life and background of Harper Lee Review section that tests your knowledge

Genres: Reference, Classics

72 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1983

Reviews

[Eric Shaffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea why I choose to read what I read. I mean, I have some consistent themes--science fiction, mystery, poetry, physics, film, non-fiction of every stripe, young adult novels--but sometimes I just see something and decide to read it. In this case, I am glad I picked up this Cliffs Notes on To Kill a Mockingbird. I've read the novel at least four times, and this was not an effort to avoid reading it again, which I intend to do soon anyway. I think I just wanted to see how the text is presented in such a format. All in all, the analysis and background presented here is suitable to someone young reading the text for the first time. What I thought was most glaringly overlooked is the masterful telling, the majestic prose style, the conscientious determination to maintain the young and naive point of view of Scout, and the corresponding commitment to using diction one would not only expect of Scout but that would allow the youngest readers, who are the ones who will benefit tremendously from this novel, not only to understand but to participate to the comprehensive extent that real literature like this novel demands of us. Now I am not saying that this is a novel for children; it's a novel for everyone, and the consistent exile of this novel from Twentieth-Century American Novel courses is a crime against readers and literature. The stupid book-seller's notion that a book should be targeted to readers slightly younger or equivalent to the age of the main character may be one reason that this novel is overlooked. Once To Kill a Mockingbird is read, however, the reader should recognize that the implacable presence and resonance of this novel matches that of Heller's Catch-22 and, to note that other monument of the 20th century novel, written by yet another one-novel wonder, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Some novels simply present us with grandeur, and To Kill a Mockingbird is one of them. By all means, read the novel (again) rather than the Cliffs Notes.